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run run run

March 29th, 2006 at 04:23 am

I feel like I have been on the go all day. My first appointment of the day was 45 minutes away, then I drove back to the office for our staff meeting, worked for about an hour then took some personal time to go show some houses, again 45 minutes away (I got a "maybe" on one of them!), then to my financial planning appt. Finally made it home, but the kids were playing outside and I didn't have the heart to make them come in on such a nice day...so I spent an hour and a half running around outside with them (not that I am complaining about THAT!). Dinner, dishes, some online education - 10 pm and it's MY time! Smile
The financial planning session was actually pretty good - it made DH and I feel pretty good about our position. While we still have too much debt for me to be comfortable with (of course, I would rather have NO debt at all), it's almost all student debt and the planner advised us not to pay it all off since we were making more with our money elsewhere, and since it is deductible. Not sure I agree with that, although I can certainly see how it makes sense. I would just love to not owe any money, period. But I think we are ahead of the game in retirement for our ages (about $24k saved - we are both 28), and we have no cc debt and only a small car loan ($2800). He told us to keep doing what we are doing. The only change he suggested, and it wasn't even a strong suggestion, was to look at mutual funds over straight stock purchases, which is what we have now. I have heard a lot about this on here and have been thinking about it myself. I do NOT tolerate risk well, and it seems the mutual funds are much less riskier than holding the 8-10 stocks we now have. But DH is adamant that the potential for growth is so much better. He says we are making about 20% on our current investments. So I think we will probably leave things as they are for now, but when we start to really accumulate more retirement savings (when he is out of school), I definitely want to put at least 25-50% in funds. Then I will feel a little more secure. But the planner said we are actually doing fine and he wouldn't recommend anything different. A mental pat on the back for us Smile
I withdrew my complaint from the Better Business Bureau today. Still have to write to Winkflash to pat them on the back. I'll put that on my to-do list for tomorrow, along with:
-clean, clean, clean (DH has the day off from school - we are going to get busy!)
-do a market analysis for a client
-start my third online course - get at least two lessons done
-get my pictures in my albums
-cancel the three trial memberships that I have gotten gift cards from already.
Busy, busy.

3 Responses to “run run run”

  1. baselle Says:
    1143607304

    First of all - 20% profit on your investments is a fantastic rate - its like Warren Buffett genius level.

    Second of all - find out a whole lot more about those mutual funds. Do they have a lot of fees associated with them? Remember that the mutual fund will charge that fee no matter whether they made a profit or not, and that past performance does not guarantee future results.

    Third of all - find out how your FP is making his money. Fee-based (what you want) or commission-based (if you sign up for the mutual fund, he might make some $$$s, and probably more than you will)?

  2. jodi_m Says:
    1143683706

    Thanks Baselle. Who paid the fp was the first question I asked - my union pays for us to have one hour of free consultation yearly, so he was not selling anything. He even told us what a waste universal life insurance was, whereas the last commission-based planner we went to tried to sell it to us. So I was at least comfortable with that aspect of it.
    He showed us a chart of what mutual funds have made over the past 5, 10, and 15 years - probably 30 different funds in all. The Vanguard (can't remember which one) and Davis stick out in my mind - returning something like 12-15% over the long term.
    Sure, DH says he is making 20% now (but one particular stock has nearly doubled, others aren't doing a thing), but what happens if one of those companies falls apart like Enron? That's my biggest worry, since we really don't have enough saved to really be diversified. if one stock really tanked, it would affect our overall savings dramatically. We'll see what happens...

  3. baselle Says:
    1143693792

    If one stock has doubled, and you have enough shares to make it worth your while, you might consider selling half of your shares and take a little profit to put somewhere else.

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